As Icicles Melt
by WishUponASwan
Summary: Arendelle is peaceful once more, and everything appears to be going well. From an outside perspective, one would have every reason to believe such to be the case; however, inside Queen Elsa's mind, there is a flurry of confusion as the depth of her new role seeps in, especially with fresh threats rearing their ugly heads. Please review:D I will try to update often (once a week).
1. Prologue

"You showered for _my_ birthday, you _have_ to shower for your queen's!" The winter solstice was mere days away, and Elsa would be turning the "ripe old age of twenty-two", as Kristoff liked to put it. He was just trying to make himself feel better about being an entire year older. He would often grumble and complain in many respects, Anna found herself thinking more often than not, and here she had another prime example for her case.

"Anna, I don't smell. Maybe there's a slight lingering smidgen of pine and musk, but it's barely noticeable. Honestly." He lifted his arms and gave a look of _See, there's no way your sister would pass out unless she was hugging me, which we know isn't happening!_

"I swear you wouldn't even notice if Sven plopped a glob on your own bed!" Anna giggled despite her ever-growing anxiety about giving Elsa the perfect birthday, as the queen had put so much thought and care into her own. Sensing her stress, Sven trudged over and gave her back a gentle rub with his antlers. The three of them were in the royal stables, where the reindeer was still a bit uncomfortable sticking out like a sore hoof among fine-bred equines. Kristoff would spend many evenings like these visiting him along with Anna and Olaf, the latter of which was tickling the velvety nose of a Fjord horse on the other side of the stable, giggling as his snow cloud perplexed the horse.

"If it truly means that much to you, I will bathe at dawn," Kristoff said, feigning exhaustion. Pecking his slightly scruffy cheek, Anna bounced up from her seat on the hay bales.

"Thank you, I know it's tough, especially scrubbing behind those ears," Anna joked, earning a sarcastic laugh from Arendelle's ice man. "I'm going to check on Elsa before I turn in for the night." Kristoff gently kissed her hand, bidding her goodnight. Failing to stifle a ferocious blush, Anna called down to Olaf. "Are you staying here or are we having another sleepover?"

"Ooh! That sounds wonderful! Will you read me more of those fairy tales? I especially love the one about the enchanted mirror…" on and on Olaf babbled.

The princess and the snowman entered the great hall and, seeing that it was empty, made their way to Elsa's study. Gerda was still trying to teach her the ins-and-outs of running a kingdom, and Elsa's lack of confidence was proving to be quite a challenge. Anna knocked rhythmically on the door frame before peeking inside.

There stood a shocked Elsa, four solemn guards, and a shivering man in a long burlap cloak. The guards surrounded the figure, swords poised to protect the queen. At the sound of Anna and Olaf's footsteps, everyone in the room spun around. Elsa's eyes locked with her sister's, and in that moment Anna sensed deep confusion and dread. The walls had become slightly frosty. The cloaked figure removed his hood, causing a stir among the guards. The head of auburn hair lifted, sharp green eyes delving into Anna with a sharp pain. His voice twisted her guts.

"Good evening, my lady," Hans rasped.


	2. Chapter One

**Chapter One**

As Olaf scurried away in fear, Anna's veins went cold, somehow even more so than when she had been frozen solid, yet she was boiling with rage. Hans' face haunted her; she would have nightmares that Kristoff turned out the same, that it was all a prank and that she was unloved; sometimes Kristoff was Hans in disguise; sometimes Kristoff up and left her, Elsa nowhere to be found to turn to; and sometimes she would wake up in the middle of the night, clutching her blanket to her face as she cried, her knuckles gone white. This was the man who had started the nightmares, who had nearly killed her sister, and had left Anna herself to die.

She noticed now that, despite the venom in his greeting, Hans seemed different. He was hunched in on himself, holding his jaw tight so that his teeth wouldn't chatter. His eyes were sunken in, but they still resembled those of a snake. A really pretty snake, but a snake nonetheless. Anna looked to Elsa, who was also shaking. Swallowing and shifting her shoulders back, it was the queen who spoke next.

"Hans, you must tell me how you got here. What business do you have here?" Elsa was remaining impressively cool-headed, as the answer to her questions seemed obviously. Anna wanted to hiss _He has come to finish the job,_ but instead threw her hands out, grasping her sister by the arm.

"What do you want with us? Aren't you supposed to be spending a life imprisoned on The Southern Isles? That's what the reports said, the ones from the court, they said you would never show your face beyond the dungeon walls again…," her voice continued to rise in both volume and pitch until Elsa gently squeezed her shoulder.

"We'll get to the bottom of this, Anna." She offered a light smile before turning back to the smooth-talking criminal.

"We had not received any word regarding your _visit,_ and I would ask you to tell us everything, though I am afraid we won't be able to trust your words." Taking a deep breath and folding her hands together to hinder any possible flurries, she continued. "Prince Hans, how did you gain passage to Arendelle?" A smirk crossed the traitor's face, but something in his eyes betrayed his false confidence.

"I managed on my own. I wouldn't be surprised if my brother's just now realized I was gone. They never paid much attention to me." He gave Elsa the best puppy eyes he could muster.

"I was told that you were being kept under lock and key in the castle dungeon." Elsa stiffened. "There is no way that anyone could get out of a heavily guarded cell undetected." Hans pretended to be taken aback.

"You doubt me, your majesty?" His brows rose, knotting together.

"Tell us why we shouldn't doubt you!" Anna interjected. "Oh, what's that, silence?" She added, giving no pause. The two red heads were slowly becoming more fired up. Elsa intervened.

"Guards, take Hans to the dungeon. Go ahead and give him food and drink, but I want him watched constantly; a guard is to be with him in his cell at all times. I also want watchmen to keep an eye out on the seas. I will write to the Southern Isles myself. My sister and I have much to discuss and we shall resume this discussion at a later time."

"I'm impressed, you come across as quite confident, my lady. Who would have thought that you would have it in you?" Hans sneered. He suddenly took on a grave expression. "But I am warning you, Your Grace, you are not safe." With that, Elsa turned a strode out of the study, poised as ever, Anna right on her heels after giving Hans a final side glare.

The sisters walked in silence, which was unusual with Anna around. The two of them went to Elsa's room for privacy; it was where they went when they wanted to be alone and catch up on lost time. It was the only place where they knew no one would come knocking. Elsa had made it quite clear to the staff that she didn't want fussing over.

Elsa locked the door as Anna perched herself on the edge of the bed, her eyes downcast as her mind raced. _Hans couldn't be back. That just wasn't something that would happen. He was done, locked away, never to hurt another soul again, but here he is, slightly disheveled but still a soggy prick who –_

"Anna?" Elsa held her sister's hand as she joined her on the bed. She remained silent, waiting for Anna's impending eruption.

"How did he get here? How did he get out? Why would he come here if not to try to take the throne again? I mean, does he actually think that after all he has done that his subjects would actually respect him? No! There would be chaos. He's insane! A sociopath, a monster." Elsa flinched at the final word.

"Anna, I don't know." She wrung her cold hands together, softly leaning into Anna, who wrapped her freckled arms around her.

"What did he say before I showed up?" Anna waited for what felt like days for Elsa to reply.

"He said that I was in danger, that you were too, that even Arendelle itself is being threatened."

"Yeah, threatened by _him_!" Anna huffed. Elsa shifted uncomfortably.

"It sounded like he meant it. His eyes, Anna, I could've sworn he was telling the truth."

"But we know him better than that. He's incapable of anything but lies, flirting, and deception. Trust me, I thought he was a gentleman, too."

"Obviously, since you were going to marry the boy," Elsa joked half-heartedly, though both of them knew this was no time to tease. Her demeanor changed again. "What if he is telling the truth?"

Anna held her sister tight. "He's not. Don't trust a word he says. Or sings. Or writes. We're safe, okay?" They both went to bed repeating that over and over again in their heads. _We're safe._ They decided to share Elsa's room that night. Neither one of them wanted to be by herself.

"I get to punch him this time, right?" Kristoff growled upon receiving the news of the unexpected guest.

"If you can punch him all the way back to the Southern Isles, be my guest!" Anna answered as Sven and Olaf exchanged concerned looks. It seemed as if both of them were prepared to give the ginger prince quite a beating.

"Anna, it's time for us to talk to him," Elsa reminded her. "We should get this over and done with." She turned around, sagging her shoulders and rubbing her arms as if to keep warm. As they walked down the long corridors leading to the dungeon, Anna attempted small talk.

"You… you don't have to be nervous. He can't hurt us with anything but his words. If he says anything we don't like, you can freeze his tongue," Anna suggested, earning a genuine laugh from her sister.

"I know. He just reminds me of what could have happened, what I almost caused." She wouldn't meet Anna's eyes.

"It's not your fault, okay?" Her sweet voice made Elsa smile.

"Thank you."

Whether or not she still blamed herself was up in the air. Anna could feel the lingering guilt dancing around them as the guards escorted them into the dimly lit prison. Two more guards stood before a heavy oak door to one of the cells, not unlike the one that Elsa had once been chained in. The tables had certainly turned. She and Anna were let in, another guard just inside, watching Hans like a starving hawk.

"You may stand outside," Elsa told him.

"Your highness –"

"I'll turn him into an ice cube if he tries anything," Elsa reassured the guard, who still seemed a bit unsure, but obeyed all the same. The door shut, the guard's eyes flicking up and down through the small door slot to make sure Hans wasn't getting violent. Hans was standing on the far side of the cell, his wrists encircled with shackles, yet he wore them almost proudly. He strode into the mid-morning light that shone through the single window. He was dressed in a simple wool tunic, though he acted as haughty as ever.

"I understand that the two of you are not likely to be enjoying my impromptu visit," he began.

"And for once he speaks the truth," Anna huffed. Hans barely glanced at her, but his lips drew back as Elsa came a bit closer.

"What I don't understand is how this visit is even possible. Your king sent me a parchment detailing the extent of your imprisonment." Elsa held out a parchment for him to examine. Without bothering to look at it, Hans maintained eye contact with Elsa.

"Well, he probably didn't tell you that I wasn't technically imprisoned, at least not in the way you would have preferred, Your Grace." Hans smiled in his disgusting way that almost seemed genuine.

"How do you mean?" Elsa asked.

"I was put in my place, as it were. I was demoted from prince to servant, the utmost disgrace to the Westergaard name. I helped the maids, the chefs, even saw to it that my brothers' shoes were polished, and shoveled the paddocks. That was prison enough for me. This," he said, eyes covering the small stone room, "is a bit much."

"It was a bit much when you asked me to marry you and then left me to –"

"Anna, we've been over this. You have a grudge. In my defense, I would've been a great king. I really do care about people." Anna turned away while the queen ignored the sass, rolling up the scroll.

"This is quite the news. It seems that King Hadrian did not give me the correct details in his letter," Elsa said, masking her growing concern. She shoved past the small squabble between Anna and her ex-fiancé.

"You're right, my brother is a liar. It simply runs in the family. So does mischief, though I tend to have the upper-hand at that. Who else could sneak out to the fjord, hide himself away in the cargo hold, and manage to invade the kingdom from which he was violently evicted?" He seemed to impress himself as he recounted his feats. "My brothers, however, are not so sneaky. That's why I'm here. As I said last night," he calmly sat down on the stone floor, "you both are in danger."

According to Hans, he had overheard his brothers, including King Hadrian, jesting about courting peasants and cracking other cruel jokes over bottles of wine. Hans, busy dusting outside of the dining room, went unnoticed as the discussion took a turn.

"Speaking of courting, that Queen Elsa of Arendelle is said to be quite the vision," Aleksander said, the fourth eldest of the Westergaard sons. Or maybe the third or fifth. It didn't make a differences to Hans, he was still the youngest. Brute laughter was heard making its way to each of the other men.

"It's truly a shame that Hans failed. We gave him his chance to prove himself honorable, but the whelp is still just a useless sack. So close he came, but alas, he could not woo his way to the throne."

"I wouldn't say he's useless," another brother piped up, startling Hans. "He is quite good at cleaning the paddocks and wiping the horses' butts!"

"Yes, until a giant snowball throws him right into the thick of it," another added, stirring up more laughter. "Your Highness, I don't think we should view this as a simply another one of Hans' failures, but as an opportunity."

"Go on," King Hadrian prompted.

"I've been thinking, we all have dignified roles to play in our kingdom, but why not expand the power? If all of Hans' stories are true, the queen and the princess are still on slippery slopes, as it were. We keep hearing that Elsa is still unsure of how to properly run her kingdom. Perhaps we offer help." A sly tone had crept into Aleksander's voice. "By _offer help_ , of course, I mean that one of us will _successfully_ woo Queen Elsa and obtain the throne. That, or we finish what Hans started, and we take it out from under her perky little nose."

Hans finished his tale and looked to the sisters blankly, murmuring, "It's up to you whether or not you heed my warning." Elsa turned to leave, lightly guiding Anna away by pressing her palm to the small of her back.

"You're right. It is up to us."


End file.
